BANZAI BABE RUTH: Baseball, Espionage, & Assassination During the 1934 Tour of JapanBy Robert K. Fitts C’87 (University of Nebraska Press, 2012, $34.95.) In November 1934, a team of American League all-stars—including Babe Ruth, Jimmy Foxx, Lou Gehrig, future secret agent Moe Berg, and manager Connie Mack—barnstormed across Japan. They stayed a month, playing 18 games, spreading good will, and spawning professional baseball in Japan. But the high hopes for horsehide diplomacy could not overcome Japan’s growing nationalism, and a bloody coup d’état and an assassination attempt threatened the tour’s success and foreshadowed the coming war. Fitts is the author of Remembering Japanese Baseball and Wally Yonamine: The Man Who Changed Japanese Baseball. BUY THIS BOOK

THE PATIENT SURVIVAL GUIDE: 8 Simple Solutions to Prevent Hospital- and Healthcare-Associated InfectionsBy Dr. Maryanne McGuckin GEd’79 GrEd’81 with Toni L. Goldfarb (Demos Health, 2012, $16.95.) Some 1.7 million patients a year acquire healthcare-associated infections, and close to 100,000 of them die. McGuckin, a former adjunct associate professor and senior research investigator in Penn’s School of Medicine, offers detailed advice to patients and their families about how to prevent those infections—and how to empower themselves during their stays. BUY THIS BOOK

DEFIANT DIPLOMAT GEORGE PLATT WALLER: American Consul in Nazi-Occupied Luxembourg, 1939-1941Edited by Willard Allen Fletcher Gr’56 and Jean Tucker Fletcher (University of Delaware Press, 2012, $80.) George Platt Waller was the US chargé d’affaires in the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg during the early days of the Nazi occupation until he was finally expelled in 1941. In this memoir, drafted a year later, he recounted the growing horror, the many incidents of individual initiative and courage, the official obstacles to the timely rescue of refugees, and his own efforts to provide visas to Luxemburg’s Jews. He bitterly condemned the Nazi civilian administration, its racial laws, and attempts to annex the country to Germany. Fletcher is an emeritus professor of history at the University of Delaware. BUY THIS BOOK

SPECIES MATTERS: Humane Advocacy and Cultural TheoryEdited by Marianne DeKoven and Michael Lundblad C’95 (Columbia University Press, 2011, $27.50.) “Why has there been resistance in the academy to linking advocacy for animals with advocacy for various human groups?” the editors ask. The essays explore many aspects of that question, particularly in relation to the “humane” treatment of animals and the implications of blurring the distinction between “the human” and “the animal.” Lundblad, an assistant professor of English and director of animality studies at Colorado State University, also contributed one of the essays. BUY THIS BOOK

THE PRIVATEERING STROKE: Salem’s Privateers in the War of 1812By Capt. Michael Rutstein C’86 (CreateSpace, 2012, $19.95.) During the War of 1812, some 500 American privateers—privately owned armed vessels authorized by the government to seize enemy ships—captured an estimated 2,000 British vessels, five times as many as the US Navy did. They also “disrupted communications, forced the organization of expensive convoys, sent insurance rates soaring, and drove up prices at a time when Britain’s economy was battered by 20 years of warfare,” writes Rutstein, who chronicles the significant privateering efforts of Salem, Massachusetts. He owns and operates the schooner Fame, a representation of the Salem privateer that sent in the first prizes of the war. BUY THIS BOOK

NETWORKING FOR PEOPLE WHO HATE NETWORKING: A Field Guide for Introverts, the Overwhelmed, and the UnderconnectedBy Devora Zack C’89 (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2010, $16.95.) Unfortunately for the taciturn, it’s not what you know, but whom you know. A self-proclaimed introvert yet successful consultant, Zack explains how to build a professional network when even approaching a stranger can set off a panic attack. BUY THIS BOOK

PEASANT AND EMPIRE IN CHRISTIAN NORTH AFRICABy Leslie Dossey C’91 (University of California Press, 2010, $60.) By incorporating extensive archaeological evidence into her examination of the provincial peasantry of Christian North Africa and focusing on the “consumer revolution” among the lower social classes during the spread of Christianity, Dossey (associate professor of history at Loyola University of Chicago) emphasizes the decreasing economic disparity between the upper class and the peasantry. BUY THIS BOOK